Single point of contact personal communication systems are desirable for providing a way for one individual to contact another using multiple devices with a single contact attempt. Many individuals use multiple devices and methods to stay in contact with others. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for a person seeking to contact an individual who uses multiple devices and methods for communication because it is unclear what is the best method or device to use. In addition, the requester may not have access to the contact information for all of the individual's devices. Time can be wasted trying multiple methods or trying to locate unknown contact information for the devices, and the person being contacted can wind up with multiple redundant messages on their devices that have to be addressed. Speed in contacting a person is particularly important in the case of an emergency, but the plethora of devices and methods that are designed to make it possible to contact someone in a broad range of circumstances can instead create confusion and delays.
The use of personal emergency, safety warning systems and methods is known in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,028,514 to Lemelson et al. (the '514 patent) discloses a personal emergency, safety warning system and method. However, the '514 patent does not actively seek contact with any specific individual, and has further drawbacks of requiring an individual to have a specialized receiver.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,728,341 to Puchek et al. (the '341 patent) discloses a monitoring and communication system for stationary and mobile persons that monitors a supervised person. However, the '341 patent does not contact an individual using multiple devices in a sequence defined by that individual, and additionally does not allow the monitored individual to delete redundant inquiries from multiple devices.
Similarly, United States Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0184346 to Mani (the '346 published application) discloses an emergency notification and override service in a multimedia-capable network that effectuates a subscriber-selectable notification scheme with respect to an incoming emergency message directed to a subscriber from an authorized entity. However, the '346 published application publication does not allow an individual to be contacted with non-emergency messages, and does not use the expiration of an allotted time to denote message delivery failure.
In addition, United States Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0069002 to Hunter et al. (the '002 published application) discloses a system and method for emergency notification content delivery that disseminates emergency notification content from an emergency originating source. However, the '002 published application does not connect the transmitting party to the user for real-time communication upon request of the user after verifying that the user's device supports real-time communication with the transmitting party, and also does not notify users of nonemergency messages.
Lastly, United States Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0096042 to Orwick et al. (the '042 published application) discloses an emergency telephone call notification service system and method that provides emergency telephone call notification. However, the '042 published application does not actively attempt to notify a specific individual, and further lacks the ability to contact devices other than telephones.
A need exists for a single point of contact personal communication system that can be used to initiate contact attempts on multiple devices when a user makes a single attempt on one device.